The Stentor

Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Karen Hermann Jon Flaksman has the best singles record on the Forester squad looking to win his bracket in the MWC tournament.

Leading into the Midwest Conference Tournament, the Forester men's tennis team dropped two matches against powerhouse tennis teams, falling to Carthage College and the University of Chicago this past week.

While Chicago is ranked #18 in the nation and Carthage a perennial dominant force in the Midwest, the Foresters were in deep water.

On Tuesday they hosted Carthage, which was a much closer match than the following day. Carthage handily defeated Lake Forest in the top spots, although the Foresters showed a bit of depth, battling in the bottom of their lineup.

Winning for the squad was the third doubles pair of sophomore Joe Campagna and Chris Paterakos and also Paterakos at the fifth singles position. The end score was 2-7.

"I think we made a pretty strong showing against Carthage," said Campagna. "They are always a really good team that has some amazing players."

The following day, the team headed down to the south side to take on the nationally-ranked University of Chicago squad. This match was a bit more lopsided, however, as the team was blanked 0-9.

"Even though we lost both of these matches, I think they were good for us," said junior Alex Presman. "We have the Conference Tournament coming up this weekend and it's better that we play good competition to get ourselves ready."

The team will have a long weekend coming up, as they travel to Madison, Wisc. tonight to play in the team tournament on Friday, where they will face St. Norbert College first. Although the team beat the Green Knights earlier in the season, the Foresters had one more player than they do now, while Norbert had one less.

The next day, the team will move on to the individual doubles tournament, in which each doubles team (of which each school has three) competes on their own. On Sunday is the singles tournament, in which each player competes by himself for a chance at a Midwest Conference title.

"This will be a busy weekend," said Campagna. "We will be playing a lot of tennis, and have a real chance to make ourselves known around the Conference. We have some great players that have the potential to get some very important wins."

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